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A dry and dusty field colored more by litter than by hope.

This was the scene that greeted the BikeTown Africa volunteers as, jetlagged, they disembarked from the small bus that had fetched them from the aiport. This large, slightly-sloped tract of dried-out grassland slap-bang in the middle the Lesotho capital of Maseru certainly didn’t look anything like an Olympic training ground. Little did we know that things would only get worse: the wind would rise and the dust with it.

But three days later, this would be the venue of an event of such passion and potential, of such exuberant response from Maseru’s children, that few of us would be able to keep a dry eye, and none would be able to wipe the grins from our faces.

The plan for BikeTown Africa Lesotho was for three days of sweat and toil: two days of hard labour in which we would build a mountain bike course and BMX track, assemble the 33 bicycles being donated as well as visit the local schools. The third would see us organizing the first of what would become a series of mountain bike races in the capital of Africa’s Mountain Kingdom. Quite a tall order, I thought initially.

Clearly I had lacked faith. What that small team achieved in that short space of time was nothing short of remarkable. (I take no credit, as I was running around holding a camera while they were all digging and raking, carrying rocks and clearing bush.) Hands more familiar with keyboards than shovels simply set to work. And local children – some of them less than waist-high – jumped in and joined us without even knowing what the end goal was.

We moved dirt. We shaped it. We raked it. We packed it down. We built jumps and bumps and berms.

And we built bicycles: 28 single-speeds that would be available for local children to take turns in using, and 5 higher-end mountain bikes that will be awarded to the best of Maseru’s cyclists at the end of the season.

And then we built enthusiasm, visiting local schools and encouraging the kids to come and participate in the racing series.

And participate they did. Hundreds and hundreds of children arrived on Event Day. Most of them neatly turned out in their school uniforms. Many of them never having previously ridden a bicycle before. But they pressed in to register, and they pressed on as they got their chances to ride, very few giving up even after many a tumble on this rather daunting course.

And we, the volunteers, stood around grinning. Grinning almost as widely as the president of the country’s Olympic Committee who understood the true transformation of this desolate dustbowl into a seedbed of hope and future champions.

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